Elementary:

BC's educational curriculum

Over the last few years, BC's educational curriculum underwent an important change. The updated curriculum will provide students with the necessary skills for their future. Children need to learn adaptive skills, especially to be prepared for the rapid change of technology in years to come.

Communicating Student Learning

Because of the redesigned curriculum, a new approach to assessment and reporting is needed. It is called Communicating Student Learning or CSL. The Vancouver School District is therefore changing its assessment and reporting practices. Changes in how parents receive information on their child’s learning will include strengths-based reporting (using a proficiency scale). This change will take place for all elementary grades by the 2020-2021 school year.

This approach gives information that advances learning rather than focusing on measuring learning. The approach helps students and parents answer three questions about the learning:

• Where is the student now?
• Where are they going?
• How do they get there?

This reporting practice gives a complete picture of how students are doing at school and how their learning is developing. By participating in this process, students are provided with meaningful information and feedback about their learning, so that they are more empowered to reach their learning goals. Parents are involved as partners in the best ways to support and improve their child’s learning.

Report card format: Learning Updates

As a result, report cards will look different, and will include:        

• Descriptive written comments addressing:
  • student learning strengths
  • areas for growth
  • ways to support learning
• A student proficiency scale for each subject area (in relation to grade level expectations):
  • EMERGING
  • DEVELOPING
  • PROFICIENT
  • EXTENDING

There is a place for all learners on this scale.

student_reporting-brochure_for_families (1).pdf

Learning Update Schedule:

There will also be a new reporting schedule. Parents will get a minimum of five communications throughout the school year:

Three formal, written Learning Updates will be shared with families each year in December, March and June. 

A minimum of two ongoing communications with families will also be shared. These ongoing communications will happen in different ways. They may be a three-way (student, parent, teacher) conference, an electronic portfolio review, a parent/teacher meeting, reflections on student work, an online platform, a telephone conversation, an interim written reports, or demonstrations of learning with opportunities for feedback.

The focus of the update in assessment and reporting practices provides a regular and ongoing basis that allows both learners and parents to gauge where children are at in their learning, what they are working toward, and, the ways in which that learning can be supported.